You are probably right.
In the meantime there is certainly a nice cash flow from FQM and they probably have more leverage than we are aware of with PTQ. The sale of aggregate will increase rapidly over the next twelve months as construction ramps up after FQM finishes their engineering work and goes full speed ahead. The financials for PDI are already maintained separately in anticipation of eventual separation. We must be receiving about one million dollars a month already for the aggregate based on contracts already in place. There is much more in the pipeline and I have heard numbers as high as $150M to $200M eventually, just for the product. God knows, we have about 30M cubic yards of the stuff and a lot of good ore underneath it.
As long as gold stays around the current level, we are still very profitable and can cover our expansion plans, even if the time line must be spread out an extra year or two. The question has been raised as to what is the hurry to expand production, if we anticipate the price of gold to return to new highs in a year or two. Better to sell it at $2,000oz. then, than $1,200oz. now. Pay our bills, reduce our debt steadily,(A/P), and prove up our reserves. Producing millions of ounces has not done Barrick any good in this market, and I am not convinced that another 30,000 or 40,000 ounces will do anything for our share price. Our forward PE Ratio should be 7-10. It is about 2.0. So, just sit back, stay profitable, clean up the Balance Sheet, and relax. Time is on our side and the gold is safe where it is. If the Chinese or someone else in the East wants to give us some money at a good rate, with no dilution, then we take it and move forward at a faster rate. For right now there is just no hurry.
AI
